Women's History Month: Mary Cassatt

Here's to strong-willed visionaries and talents like Mary Cassatt, American painter.

Cassatt grew up in an environment that viewed travel as integral to education; she spent five years in Europe and visited many of the capitals, including London, Paris, and Berlin. While abroad she learned German and French and had her first lessons in drawing and music.

Though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the early age of 15. Part of her parents' concern may have been Cassatt’s exposure to feminist ideas and the bohemian behavior of some of the male students. Although about 20 percent of the students were female, most viewed art as a socially valuable skill; few of them were determined, as Cassatt was, to make art their career.

Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers, she decided to study the old masters on her own. She later said, “There was no teaching” at the Academy. Female students could not use live models and the principal training was primarily drawing from casts.

Cassatt decided to end her studies (at that time, no degree was granted). After overcoming her father’s objections, she moved to Paris in 1866, with her mother and family friends acting as chaperones. Since women could not yet attend the École des Beaux-Arts, she applied to study privately with masters from the school and was accepted to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly regarded teacher known for his hyper-realistic technique and his depiction of exotic subjects. Cassatt augmented her artistic training with daily copying in the Louvre (she obtained the required permit, which was necessary to control the “copyists,” usually low-paid women who daily filled the museum to paint copies for sale). The museum also served as a social meeting place for Frenchmen and American female students who, like Cassatt, were not allowed to attend cafes where the avant-garde socialized.

In 1868, one of her paintings, A Mandoline Player, was accepted for the first time by the selection jury for the Paris Salon. Cassatt saw that works by female artists were often dismissed with contempt unless the artist had a friend or protector on the jury, and she would not flirt with jurors to curry favor.

Cassatt traveled to Chicago to try her luck at establishing herself as an artist, but lost some of her early paintings in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

She was invited by Edgar Degas to show her works with the Impressionists, a group that had begun their own series of independent exhibitions in 1874 with much attendant notoriety. She had strong feelings for Degas but learned not to expect too much from his fickle and temperamental nature. Also, Mary had decided early in life that marriage would be incompatible with her career.

In recognition of Cassatt's contributions to the arts, France awarded her the Légion d'honneur in 1904.

Diagnosed with diabetes, rheumatism, neuralgia, and cataracts in 1911, Cassatt did not slow down, but after 1914 she was forced to stop painting as she became almost blind. Nonetheless, she took up the cause of women's suffrage, and in 1915, she showed 18 works in an exhibition supporting the movement.

Her paintings have sold for as much as $2.9 million.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cassatt